Don't Feed the Yao Guai!
by Progman
Summary: A collection of short stories taking place across the wastes. Told from the perspectives of everyone who ISN'T the Vault Dweller, the Chosen One, the Lone Wanderer, or the Courier. Updated randomly. Rated M for Cass.
1. Ironic Orbital Bombardment

**A/N: Fallout, oh how I've missed you. These will mostly be fun little one-offs to keep the writing juices flowing, as writing for Fallout is like a zero stress environment for me. As opposed to Mass Effect, where it is almost impossible for me to write short little fun things without going off on tangents. **

**If you have no idea what "Flock of Vandals" is, you can skip ahead to the story. If not, please read the rest of the blurb.**

**In case you're worried that this means I'm moving on from that story, don't be. Don't ever be. I'm not dropping that story. Ever. I got thrown for a loop by one of my writing professors, for a good reason, and had to take a step back and reevaluate what I've been doing, and how to do it better. I have no idea when the next chapter will be up, but I promise you that you'll see a significant improvement over the first three. I take storytelling, in regards to my own writing, extremely seriously. The context is irrelevant. It has to be to the absolute best of my ability. End of story.**

**Anyway, Bethesda, Obsidian, Black Isle, Interplay, whatever, owns many parts of this and that and all of it. Enjoy!**

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"She sure is taking her sweet ass time in there...not sure if I should be worried, and go in guns blazin' like a psycho'd up cazador, or hopeful that she's killing those fuckers real slow," mused Cass, poking out from the street corner to take a quick peak at the _Silver Rush. _"Cut some tendons here, few veins there, let 'em sprawl out and bleed out..."

The Courier had been gone for around an hour, leaving her, Veronica, and ED-E just outside the _Atomic Wrangler_. Half because it had things, and people, to keep them entertained, and half to make sure Cass didn't just bury the Van Graffs in lead, or firebomb the building, or try to convince the Brotherhood of Steel to get involved. And a few thousand other ideas she'd made the mistake of openly discussing with her entourage.

She should've just kept her mouth shut and planted C-4 in the security guard's pants. Everything would've been so much simpler.

Veronica cleared her throat, failing once again to act 'natural'. She always stood like a soldier, and was far too pretty to just blend in. Cass had that problem, too. Obviously. "That's a great mental image. Ever thought of writing a book of your colorful, folksy, poetry?" she asked, sounding genuine. "I think it'd sell. There's a market for the 'well traveled' woman. At least I hope there is, because I'd buy it, and then I'd feel really awkward if I owned the only copy."

"Huh. 'Well traveled'? Gotta hand it to you. Pretty creative way to say that I'm 'broken in'. Like a couch. Or boots. Or a whore," countered Cass, very pleased with herself. She knew the other woman didn't think of her like that. Boone might, but he'd been married, or something, so he didn't count. Veronica was a sweet girl, which is why it was so much fun to tease her 'till she squirmed.

"Oh! No, I didn't mean it like that at all!" she stammered, clearly embarrassed. "I actually find your open sexuality inspiring! I—I wish I could be more like you, in that way. It's a lot more difficult for me, for obvious reasons, to even try to...get to that point. Procreation being one of the biggest, and basically the only hurdle. Brotherhood is pretty keen on making babies. Yay. Babies..."

"Pbbth, overrated. Getting knocked up is about the lowest thing on my to do list. Just above 'death by alcohol poisoning', 'captured by the Legion' and 'not killing the Van Graffs'."

The Van Graffs. That's why she was here. That's why they were here. Her, the Courier, that floating robot, and little miss Brotherhood who couldn't blend in with a crowd if she had a stealthboy and a ball gag. Cass smiled to herself, and filed that idea away for later. Not the part about Veronica, though. That'd just be cruel, like shooting the wings off a bloatfly and punting it into a gorge just to see how far it'd go when it couldn't fly. Cass filed that idea away, too.

"Why are any of those things on your to do list at all?" asked Veronica.

"Hush, now. Let me finish my thought."

"What?"

"Shh!"

Rose of Sharon Cassidy was just too clever for her own good. Sometimes. Mostly. Not all the time. A few times. Basically fucking never, if she were being honest. At least she wasn't some old world dirt pilgrim. Whatever the fuck that was.

ED-E made some blips and chirps, so Cass looked at it like she would a person who was speaking. She never had any fucking idea what it said, but it was a neat little robot, so it felt somehow impolite to just ignore it.

Veronica laughed, because of course she could understand it, and covered her grin. "Wow! I didn't think anyone could make so many double entendres with the word ghetto! You're absolutely right, ED-E. Freeside could use a little more...support columns and catalyst infrastructure. Mostly the catalyst infrastructure, but I'm pretty biased."

ED-E did that thing again where it talked without talking.

"Nope. Just made it up! I'm glad you liked it," smiled Veronica.

"No, please, do keep having your private conversation," scoffed Cass, taking another look down the street at the building that would soon be on fire. "I'm all ears about Freeside and sex, or something. Can't follow you, ED-E. Get a voice module installed, or something. If fucking Protectrons and Sentry Bots can do it, there's no reason you can't."

ED-E beeped and whirred and whizzed and did other crap like that.

"ED-E says that both his hardware and software are proprietary, so basic RobCo parts wouldn't work. He'd need something custom made, which isn't likely to happen any time soon."

Cass frowned. "Well, okay. I guess going to Mick and Ralph's and prying one out of the old robots is out the window. Dammit, Freeside isn't worth the cement it wasn't even built on."

Freeside was a ghetto, name not withstanding. Buildings were crumpled, the sick and dying scurried about the lifeless streets, desperate for a fix, some food and a decent lay. To Cass, that was just any other town, but Freeside had one very important difference. It was two blocks away from the biggest sack of glitz, glamor and wealth on the fucking planet. Only a wall, maintained by dumb looking robots with TVs for faces and stupid wheels for legs, kept the rich and snooty types from the drugged up and hungry types.

Well, all of that shit and the Van Graffs. The Kings, too, she guessed, but all that hair gel made them a blur in her mind. She just didn't give two shits about gangs as cultish as that one. The way they all looked the same, even more than the Fiends, didn't sit right with her. Kings of what? she'd asked them. They didn't have a fucking clue. Sure wasn't Freeside, 'cause they wanted it independent.

Piece of shit hypocrites, every damn one of 'em.

Cass really didn't care about the 'class warfare'. She just hated that the wall was there at all. What's gambling without all the dirt and grime? New Reno was a shithole, but it was an honest shithole. It knew it was a shithole, and didn't try to hide all the shit or the holes, which were mostly asses and snatches, respectively. Mostly. Vegas, on the other shitty hand, just lied to itself, swinging it's big floppy dick around like it was the only dick worth seeing.

Out in Nevada, maybe. Then again, the Mojave Outpost had it's fair share of dicks that were well worth her time. Which meant that Vegas was, as she'd always known, full of shit.

"I wouldn't say that, Cass," said the Courier as she jogged over to them. Her duster swept up an apt amount of dust off the concrete, dirtying the otherwise spotless breast plate of her Desert Ranger armor. She noticed, very quickly, and frustratedly wiped the dust off her chest. "If the Strip wasn't actively starving them to death, it'd be a pretty cool place."

Cass sneered at her. "What? Where the fuck have you been? We've been sitting on our hands for over an hour out here, and I've had to listen to these two make conversation that I can only half understand."

"Cass. I wasn't done."

"Oh, sorry. I'll hold off on being pissed 'till you're done, then."

"Good. I was going to say that Freeside would be a pretty cool place..." The woman tossed her a bright red toy pistol. "...as long as we burn these bastards down. I just saw a woman murder her lover, in cold blood, just to prove a point to a client." She turned to Veronica, grimacing. "I also got some pretty powerful incest vibes from the two who owned the place. So there's also that."

Veronica screwed up her face in disgust. "Eugh! Gross! Why would anyone even do that?"

Cass lazily looked over the toy pistol, curious as to why the Courier had given it to her. "I dunno. Boredom, maybe? Sure as hell was reason enough for me."

The Courier, Veronica and even ED-E stared at her.

"Oh, get the radscorpions out of your butts! It's a joke! I don't even have any brothers or sisters!"

The Courier only looked at her with wider eyes. "...maybe that's why her dad left-"

"Shut the fuck up what is this thing?!" she snapped back, transitioning seamlessly to the toy pistol. She waved it around in front of her.

"Stop! Don't do that, it's probably fragile! It's a laser designator for an orbital space laser."

Cass deadpanned. "An orbital space laser."

"Yup. Apparently, that's what HELIOS One was actually for. Go figure."

Veronica crossed her arms. "Yeah. Go figure that it took you all of thirty minutes to unlock the secrets of the place that half of my brothers fought and died for. I don't know whether to think the Brotherhood is full of idiots, or you're somehow more brilliant than Elijah."

The Courier scratched the back of her head, looking guilty. "I don't think it's either of those things. The NCR did most of the work repairing the place, and the Followers of Apocalypse actually figured it out long before I got there. Right place, right time."

"That tends to happen to you a lot, doesn't it?"

"I try not to question it. Makes the bullet part of my brain hurt."

ED-E chirped.

"That makes way too much sense," said the Courier, chuckling.

Cass sighed. "Orbital. Space. Laser. You're shitting me."

The Courier shook her head. "Not even a little. Point and shoot, and this big blue beam will fall from the sky and blow up whatever you were aiming at. It's really handy!"

"Oh, fuck yeah it is." Cass's eyes lit up at that. She turned around aimed the designator at the _Silver Rush. _"Burn my people to ash, huh?" she whispered. "Karma's a bitch, and payback is too." She fired. Nothing happened. The toy did nothing. She slapped it and tried again. Nothing.

"If Arcade were here, he'd call that thing a war crime," said Veronica.

"Oh, of course, and I'd agree with him. It's a good thing none of us are enlisted in a military that is actively fighting a war, isn't it?" said the Courier.

"I...suppose that's true..." Veronica was silent for a moment. "It's a little scary how easy it is for me to agree with you about that."

"It's called chemistry, I have it with everybody."

"Wow. You're awfully humble today," snarked Veronica

ED-E beeped and clacked and hummed.

Cass feathered the trigger a few dozen times. She scowled, huffed and gestured to the _Silver Rush_. "Hey, think your stupid toy is broken because those fuckers aren't burnt to ash or didn't explode or whatever this thing does."

"Little of both. Did you turn off the safety?" asked the Courier.

Cass inspected the gun and grumbled as she disabled the safety. "Thanks. Are we safe here? Shoulda asked that before."

"Yeah, we're fine. Probably. Just shove it in your pocket and head on into the Wrangler when it hits. I don't want House getting all pissy over the orbital space laser."

Cass aimed and fired. "Yeah, sure." The gun screeched, crackled and beeped for a few seconds as a weird series of images flashed across the display. "...what the hell? Is it supposed to-"

A massive pillar of blue light slammed into the _Silver Rush _with meteoric force, disintegrating and obliterating everything around it in a gut wrenching explosion. The four of them were catapulted straight into the _Atomic Wrangler. _

Cass landed right on top of the Courier, and could only hear ringing. And her heartbeat. Which was good. Her head felt like an alarm clock, just ringing and ringing and ringing and-

"Cass," giggled the Courier. "You top me any longer and I'm going to start thinking you're sweet on me."

Cass looked up, groggy and disoriented as all hell. She saw Veronica, pulling herself up out of a pile of smashed slot machines, and ED-E, wedged halfway into the stage left wall. She looked down at the Courier, grins and all, and it all became clear.

"I need a drink."

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**A/N: I have the biggest crush on Rose of Sharon Cassidy. She's just the best. She really, really is. Getting inside of her head for that pseudo-tangential vulgar thought process was incredibly fun. If she seems more pissed off, irritable and appears to be speaking faster here than she does normally, keep in mind that she's still in her blood feud with Crimson Caravan and the Van Graffs. Hell hath no fury like Cass without her whiskey, as the saying goes. It's not that relevant to this context, but she's pissed because people fucked with her, so there you go.**

**As for the Courier, just assume she took both the "Black Widow" and "Cherchez La Femme" perks. I'm not gonna characterize any of the player characters more than a few jokes or comments, so this in no way means they're gettin' together. Ideally, they won't be there at all.**

**The Courier's "It's called chemistry, I have it with everybody." is a stolen classic ****Jeff Winger line from NBC's "Community". Specifically, ****"Paradigms of Human Memory" ****Season 2, Episode 21. With a Speech of 100 and a Charisma of 10, it's also true.**

**Lastly: Fallout 3 has been out for 6 years, and NO ONE has chosen this as a fic title?! There's like 3 Fallout 1/2 characters in the selection boxes, which isn't cool. I wanted to put Frank Horrigan in there...**

**Don't forget to drop a review, if you're so inclined. Box is right there, below this sentence. Can't miss it.**


	2. American Graffiti: 2277

**A/N: Procrastinating on things, but still needed to be productive. Funny how that works out.**

**Bethesda, Obsidian, the remains of Black Isle and Interplay own many things that are related to Fallout, not me. **

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"Okay, we push on three. Ready?" yelled Sentinel Sarah Lyons to the rest of the Pride. Her power armor felt heavy for the first time in over a decade. She was sluggish, even a little clumsy, as she braced herself against the last unsealed hangar door of Adams Air Force Base.

Adam's Air Force Base was a wreck. Shattered turrets, melted barricades, destroyed vertibirds, dismembered Enclave soldiers, and scrapped robots littered the airfield. The Tesla Cannon was obviously far more an effective weapon than the Codex had given it credit for.

A few hours ago, she'd finally fought her way out of a three week coma. Her father and Rothschild had urged her not to accompany the Pride, her family, for their crap shoot diversion plan. Obviously, she'd gone anyway. Tristan and Gunney practically shoved her into her armor and out the front gate before her dad could issue formal orders for them not to do that. 101 was a Knight of the Brotherhood, and she wasn't about to abandon one of her brothers just because she wasn't 'fully recovered'.

The Oath of Fraternity didn't allow for it.

"Wait! On three, or after three?" asked Paladin Kodiak. If it had been anyone else, Sarah would've assumed they were being a smartass. Not Kodiak, though. He was far too polite. That is, unless he'd become an entirely different person in three weeks.

"On three, Kodiak."

Sarah was not happy. Things might've happened differently if she hadn't gotten her helmet blown off during the assault on the Purifier. She wouldn't have hit her head, and her power armor wouldn't have been effectively useless against the massive burst of radiation. The T-45a was environmentally sealed and lead lined, but without the helmet that crucial protection didn't mean anything. It was a miracle her face wasn't burned off or that she wasn't suffering from stage one ghoulification.

She hoped.

The Jefferson Memorial had done a number on her and 101, but the woman who'd stepped out of the vault woke up first. A week earlier. And she was supposed to be even more dead than Sarah was. 101 was at ground zero when the Purifier overloaded, sacrificing herself for her father's work and tragically planning to die in the very same place. Apparently, something about a 'Moira Brown' and a few dozen benign mutations involving cellular regeneration and supposedly impossible radiation levels had saved her life.

As far as Sarah was concerned, 101 had somehow managed to become a ghoul, without all of the aesthetic side effects. If she turned out to be immortal too, Rothschild's head might explode.

"Shouldn't we wait for Gallows? These doors are heavy, you know," said Knight Captain Colvin. He playfully shouldered Knight Captain Dusk, knocking her off balance.

"Forget about him, he's probably doing something important," countered Dusk. She smacked Colvin on the top of his helmet. "That's what he's doing, right?" she asked Sarah.

"We don't have time for this! That crawler could get blown to hell any minute, so we're focusing on hauling as much Enclave tech out of here as we can! Clear?"

"Yes, ma'am!" they cheered in unison.

"Okay! One, two, three!"

After a few seconds of the combined efforts of five power armored soldiers, the hangar door began to roll open. Sarah pushed with all her might, ignoring her overexertion she was putting on her dulled and weakened body. When it was halfway open, Paladin Glade, somehow, summoned more strength than she thought possible as he laughed heartily. The door slid wide open, revealing something truly astounding.

Dozens of Vertibirds. Unguarded and Intact.

Glade whistled. "Hot damn! It looks like 101 missed a few with that cannon of hers!" He gestured proudly to their newly acquired fleet. "And, if I'm not mistaken, this hangar is well outside of the blast radius of those damn orbital strikes."

"It is," said Paladin Gallows, appearing next to Sarah seemingly out of thin air. He had a sack slung over his shoulder.

"What have I told you about doing that, Gallows? We can't give you support if we don't know where you are," said Paladin Vargas.

"If I need support, you'll know where I am," He pointed to the closest Vertibird. "That one isn't locked."

Sarah stared at Gallows for a moment. "How do you know that?"

Gallows, already halfway to the Vertibird, flashed a shiny piece of metal. "I found the keys."

The rest of the Pride followed him, and Sarah was curious as to what the hell Gallows was planning. He opened the side hatch of the Vertibird and turned to Kodiak. "Strip down to your underarmour. Take the key, sit down in the pilot's seat." He tossed him the key. "Figure it out."

Kodiak looked between the Vertibird and the key. "I...can do that," he said, oddly confident. He started getting out his armor.

"What? You can't be serious," said Colvin.

"For once, we agree," said Dusk.

Kodiak hopped into the Vertibird. "Trust me! I've got a good feeling about this!" he yelled out to them.

Sarah and Vargas walked over to Gallows, neither looking too pleased. "I give you a lot of operational freedom, Gallows, but you have no right to order the Pride around like that," berated Sarah.

Vargas crossed his arms. "What the hell are you even planning? Kodiak can't fly that thing! Nobody outside of the Enclave can. Before the war, it took years to train soldiers to pilot fighters, so what makes you think that Kodiak can just 'figure it out' in a few minutes?"

Gallows looked them over. "He can, because he needs to." He dropped his sack onto the ground and handed them both a paint gun. "101 is a Knight. A brother. We all took the Oath of Fraternity. We don't leave our own behind." He tossed another three paint guns to Colvin, Dusk and Glade. "There's a landing pad on top of the crawler, right next to the tower. We need to be there when she's done." He sprayed a long streak of light grey paint along the frame of the Vertibird and worked his way back, cleansing every trace of Enclave ownership away.

Sarah stood tall. She knew what he was doing. "But only if we're flying the right colors." She set to work on the Vertibird, quickly coating the landing gear with paint.

Vargas, Colvin, Glade and Dusk joined them, and it wasn't long before they'd sprayed every inch of the Vertibird clean. Gallows, true to form, covered the hatch with the Brotherhood of Steel insignia in pale yellow.

It looked beautiful.

This meant a lot more to Sarah than a mere paint job. The Brotherhood of Steel was founded to recover and safeguard Old World technologies, especially military, from the rest of humanity. Those who survived in the wastes would destroy themselves, just as the Old World had done before.

The peaceful, and successful, settlements dotted around the Capital Wasteland were a testament to just how out of touch the other chapters of their order were. These people weren't savages. They wanted food and water, because they already had shelter.

The Enclave used Old World technology for genocide and domination. They were children playing with guns. Feral raiders drugged out of their minds. Slavers, maniac cultists and bloodthirsty mercenaries.

They were the savages, and it wasn't until she found herself repainting a Vertibird that Sarah finally understood that.

Kodiak popped the hatch, grinning wide. "Alright, everyone pile in! We've got a Messiah to save!"

The Pride loaded up into the Vertibird, their Vertibird, and Sarah sealed the hatch shut behind them. "I take it you somehow figured out how to fly this thing, Kodiak?"

"Not even close."

"So how are we supposed to get the hell up there?" barked Dusk.

"It has an autopilot with two dozen presets. I can take us up to the crawler and back to the Citadel by pressing about four buttons." said Kodiak.

Vargas, Sarah, Glade, Dusk and Colvin all stared at Gallows. The Vertibird started move, rolling out of the hangar and onto the airfield.

"You knew," said Sarah.

"I did," he said. He reached up into the storage compartment above his seat and tossed a binder to Vargas. "Found one of those about an hour ago. Had a key in it."

Vargas skimmed through the binder and frowned. "It's a Vertibird operations manual." He passed it to Sarah, who handed it off to Glade. "Why didn't you tell us about this?"

The Vertibird roared to life and began it's take off sequence. It rattled the interior of the hull and Sarah realized, for the briefest of moments, that she'd never actually flown through the air before. She was the first in her family to fly in more than two hundred years.

Gallows shrugged. "We thought 101 blew them all up."

Sarah felt the Vertibird rise in altitude, and tried very hard not to have a panic attack. She was flying. Flying. It was impossible, and yet it wasn't. "None of this matters right now. Kodiak, do we have a visual?"

"Yes ma'am! Her and that big Super Mutant just left the tower. We should be landing in a thirty seconds."

"What? Can he even fit in here?!" said Colvin.

"Can we even take off with that much weight?" asked Dusk.

"Yeah," said Gallows.

"You just have an answer for everything, don't you?" said Dusk.

Gallows shrugged.

"He's not sitting on my lap, I'll tell you that much!" laughed Glade.

"This is one for the Scrolls." said Sarah. She stood up and walked over to the hatch. She looked over the Pride, smiling. "He can sit on mine."

The Vertibird landed and she opened the hatch, fulfilling her oath.

* * *

**A/N: Bit of a long one here, but I had a lot of thoughts while writing this that I think are worth sharing. It gets ranty, but it's fun.**

**Obviously, Vertibirds would have an autopilot function in case the Enclave got so small it couldn't afford to train new pilots. It can't attack things or do good maneuvering, but it can go to set places using predefined flight paths.**

**Sarah Lyons is pretty cool, and I wish we'd seen more of her in Fallout 3. We got LOTS of Sydney, who was awesome...and is strangely similar to Cass, sans all of the vulgarity and drinking... Huh. Anyway, Sarah Lyons. I like that she's not actually a badass, but an excellent leader and soldier. She's by no means Commander Shepard, nor is she the Lone Wanderer, Vault Dweller, etc. It's refreshing, to be frank.**

**I always wondered about this part of Broken Steel. The Pride shows up, seemingly out of nowhere, with a Vertibird they shouldn't be able to fly that they also found the time to repaint. It was such an awesome moment, but for years I've felt like there was something far more important going on there that we didn't get to see. I played it again recently, and came up with something this basic idea.**

**The irony here is actually sort of amazing. The hysterical irony of Liberty Prime mistaking ****the United States Government for the Red Chinese alludes to it a little. "COMMUNISTS DETECTED ON AMERICAN SOIL. LETHAL FORCE ENGAGED." If you think about it, only the Scribes would actually understand how ironic that actually is. **

**In Fallout 2 and 3, we get a more powerful statement. The sort of thing that the Brotherhood is sworn to prevent is being perpetrated by one of the last remnants (no pun intended) of the Old World. ****To be totally honest with you, I only figured that out in the process of writing this. I'm not sure if Black Isle intended that or not, but knowing their attention to detail, I have a feeling they did. It only becomes a direct and visible conflict in Fallout 3, and therefore a more obvious antithesis, so that's probably why I saw it now and not after playing Fallout 2 a lot. **

**A Guest Review asked me to do some M!Courier Cass shorts, because apparently there are few of those. I found that a little surprising, to be honest. She's very much on the hetero side of bisexuality, if that makes any sense. I honestly don't see Cass as being in a straight up lesbian relationship, or even having sex with the same woman more than twice, so I won't be writing that. It wouldn't feel true to her character. **

**M!Courier is a fun guy, though. ****In my head, M!Courier is clumsy, while F!Courier is often times absentminded. They both mean well, but have different ways of screwing things up. Obviously, I don't take them seriously in this series, as they're such blank slates you can do pretty much anything.**

**ANYWAY: Writing the Lone Wanderer, however, is...trickier. She's/He's 19-20 years old for the entire game and naive as all hell for half of it. It's a coming of age story that would require far more nuance. Or maybe I'll just make them far too trusting like ParagonShepard.**

**That's actually a really funny idea. Hmm.**

**Next on the docket (maaaaaaaybe...) is Veronica getting closure regarding Christine, ie the truth of all that. Or maybe something with [Companion] and M!LoneWanderer being baffled by the D.C. Metro System. Or maybe something with the Vault Dweller dozing off in the middle of a Cathedral sermon she's/he's supposed to be gaining intel on, witnessed by that Followers of the Apocalypse Spy. We'll see.**

**Anyway, if you've got thoughts or suggestions/requests/scathing hate, drop it in the box right below this sentence. See you next time!**


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